The UW Bioengineering Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Committee

The UW Bioengineering JEDI committee is coordinating with other committees to develop mechanisms to increase our department’s level of expertise on anti-racism and inclusive teaching and mentoring, to provide similar expertise to our trainees through curricular changes and workshops, to redesign our hiring, admissions, retention, and support processes to remove structural as well as individual biases, and to engage in transparent communication with the Bioengineering community that includes opportunities for feedback.

2024-2025 Objectives/Projects:

  1. Educate ourselves on anti-racism and DEI skills.
    This involves finding and acquiring readings for the JEDI committee so that we can better educate ourselves.
  2. Rushmer Lecture
    Find a speaker to give the Rushmer lecture and meet with department stakeholders to provide insights for our JEDI initiatives.
  3. JEDI Communications
    Review updated land acknowledgement, promote JEDI events and resources to the BioE community, and otherwise provide JEDI-related communications including reviewing and updating the JEDI website.
  4. DiversiTEA
    Identify goals for DEI and representation in the community and run programs, collaborating with intra- and extra-departmental resources and groups to better meet these goals. Determine barriers limiting representation and use programming as a way to remove these barriers.
  5. Outreach
    Increase school visits in winter and spring quarters, with an emphasis on recruiting more underrepresented students to BioE. These visits can demonstrate BioE as a possible pathway that underrepresented students are not aware is open to them. Focus on rebuilding contacts and find new partners to bring outreach efforts to.
  6. Faculty Diversity
    Continue working to improve diversity of faculty by empowering faculty, especially those of marginalized identities, and ensure support through transitions to next career stages. Recruit faculty applicants bringing diversity to UW BioE, and consider best practices for hiring. Identify barriers to junior faculty from  achieving their potential and take tangible steps towards addressing them, possibly through faculty mentoring.

JEDI Full Committee Published Meeting Minutes – Please note that the document will be updated with upcoming meetings minutes during the academic year.